The Southern Poverty Law Center: Media Sees Evil, Hears Evil, Reports No Evil

Protecting a source shouldn't mean suppressing negative news.

A nationally known organization with a highly-paid CEO and three-quarters of a billion dollars in net assets publicly feuds with its employees’ union over mass layoffs, all while continuing to rake in new dollars. Sounds like a story the media wouldn’t be able to resist. But in the case of the Southern Poverty Law Center, most did just that. 

SPLC employees first voted to unionize in 2019. When management reached an agreement with the union in 2022, president and CEO Margaret Huang gushed, “This is a proud day for the SPLC — true to our work and true to our values, we are proud to be a unionized organization. SPLC has fought for, supported, and partnered with unions for decades. Union values are in our DNA.”

The honeymoon is over. Earlier in June, the union lashed out on Twitter (X): “Today, @splcenter - an organization with nearly a billion dollars in reserves, given an F rating by CharityWatch for “hoarding” donations  - gutted its staff by a quarter.” 

The union’s broadside continued: “More than 60 SPLC Union members, including five Union stewards and our Union Chair, were informed that they would be losing their jobs. We are devastated for our Union and for our colleagues.. The layoffs of all 16 staff in the Southern Immigrant Freedom Initiative and its office closure will decimate free legal representation to detained immigrants across Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi.”

Their silence on these layoffs is particularly significant given the national media’s incessant and credulous citing of the Southern Poverty Law Center as an expert, reliable source on all things hate-related (as long as the “hate” is coming from one direction, as the org’s Hatewatch makes explicit: “Hatewatch monitors and exposes the activities of the American radical right.” [emphasis added]

One might expect integrity would demand these same reporters cover the turmoil embroiling a favorite source. But one would be wrong. 

Of all the major national media outlets, only Fox News (news and opinion) and the Associated Press have covered the layoffs story thus far. The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, National Public Radio, CBS News, NBC News, and CNN have completely ignored it. The Washington Post and ABC News ran the Associated Press wire story but have no original reporting on the layoffs, or the union’s charges of “hoarding” donor funds.

This does not mean, however, that the Southern Poverty Law Center has lost its position as a media go-to source. In just the past few weeks, the New York Times cited the SPLC three times, as has NBC News. Searches of major media websites for the past year yield scores of hits for the SPLC. 

Contacted about the lack of coverage the layoffs are receiving, a spokesperson for the SPLC union told Pluribus that they “had inquiries from a number of affiliated reporters” from major news organizations. Most of these inquiries, apparently, were dead ends, producing no additional stories.

The layoff issue has not gone completely unnoticed. Christopher Mathias at The Huffington Post and Talia Jane at The New Republic both wrote articles after the news broke. But in a familiar trope, both articles primarily focused on the right’s reaction to the layoffs: Right-Wingers Rejoice Over Layoffs At Southern Poverty Law Center and MAGA Can’t Stop Celebrating Layoffs at Major Civil Rights Organization, respectively.

And what of the SPLC union’s charges in its tweetstorm? While the SPLC itself has largely been silent about the extent of the cutbacks, the union’s tweets claimed the organization “gutted its staff by a quarter” and that over “60 SPLC Union members” lost their jobs. The SPLC’s 2022 Form 990 reported a total of 469 employees at that time. When Pluribus asked about the apparent discrepancy, the union spokesperson replied:

The number discrepancy has been largely because SPLC has provided very little transparency about the total number. We know that they laid off 61 non-management staff, and estimates for how many management staff has varied, leading us to believe the number could be as high a[s] 100 total staff, including both Union-eligible and non-Union eligible. Our understanding is that our current staffing is significantly lower than 2022; closer to 400. So that 100/400 is where we got our quarter estimate from.

While the union claimed the SPLC has “nearly a billion dollars in reserves,” the actual assets as of the October 31, 2023 financial statements were closer to three-quarters of a billion. The union’s statement about the SPLC’s F rating from the Charity Watch watchdog group is borne out by the non-profit watchdog’s website. The SPLC’s initial rating of a B is reduced to an F because “CharityWatch downgrades to an F rating any charity holding available assets in reserve equal to 5 years or more of its annual budget.”

The bottom line?  This information is readily available and significant by any measure. The press is well aware of what is taking place at the Southern Poverty Law Center. The choice to not report it is deliberate.

Shielding a favored source from embarrassing publicity is a prime example of the bias of omission that plagues much of the traditional media. It is no wonder a growing awareness of this kind of selective reporting has the public seeking alternative sources of news.